Sam Kagel: Coast Arbitrator
Introduction by Harvey Schwartz
Then, with America’s entry into World War II, Kagel re-directed his considerable talent and energy to employment with the War Manpower Commission (WMC), a federal agency established in 1942. The WMC sought to strengthen American wartime production through the recruitment of workers into war plants, ship yards and other enterprises important to the military effort. It used labor-management committees, coordination with a vast array of related war agencies, staged public events and various other devices to achieve its goal.
After the war ended in 1945, Kagel worked as an impartial arbitrator and attended law school. His wide experience in labor relations led to his 1948 appointment as the first Coast Arbitrator under the ILWU-PMA longshore contract. When he retired after 54 years on the job, Kagel was a legend on the waterfront and the nation’s leading figure since 1932. Instead, government boards were set up with union and employer representatives and arbitrators in the middle or chairmen who became arbitrators.
Joining the new War Labor Board (WLB), which functioned that way, didn’t appeal to me. I had just come off the battlefield as a union advocate and I wasn’t prepared to go into a convent. Under the WLB, regulations came down covering various issues, but the WLB was mainly active trying to get at employers who were violating its guidelines. That’s when the lawyers came into collective bargaining in large measure because now you had government regulations. The lawyers, for godsake, were happy as larks. They were back in business on both sides. It was not my cup of tea.
Fortunately, the War Manpower Commission (WMC) was set up in 1942 by an order from President Franklin Roosevelt. There was a local labor-management committee of big wheels that asked me to work there, and I accepted. The mission of the WMC, as the military called it in those years, was to recruit and prioritize labor for the war effort.
Our WMC office staff worked closely with a labor-management committee that met weekly. We also coordinated with all the other war agencies to get a job in a law firm you had to contribute money toward the rent. That concerned me. Well, by chance I was offered a teaching fellowship in economics at Cal, which I accepted. Soon I went to work for the Pacific Coast Labor Bureau and put off law school.
When the war ended in 1945 I had to make a choice. I could either go to law school or go back to being an advocate for unions. The union guys were asking me when I was going to open an office. But at the moment I was not interested in going back to advocacy. Things had changed in the field of labor arbitration. This month’s story focuses on his career from World War II through his Coast Arbitrator years.
In 1999 I was commissioned by the ILWU Coast Labor Relations Committee to interview Kagel. Those 1999 discussions provided the basis for this article. Special thanks to the staffs of the Labor Archives, San Francisco State University and the San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library, for their help.
SAM KAGEL
Edited by Harvey Schwartz,
Curator, ILWU Oral History Collection
In December 1941, when the United States got into World War II, collective bargaining as I had experienced it disappeared. The ILWU stated publicly that there would be no strikes within its jurisdiction. Throughout the whole country there were few strikes or lockouts while the war was on. That did not leave a very exciting role to the Pacific Coast Labor Bureau that I had worked for representing unions in negotiations and arbitrations figure out the best way to recruit and retain workers for war industries. To me, that was a much more direct deal than I would have had going into a board to decide a penalty whenever an employer violated a regulation by offering somebody another ten dollars to leave a war job and come over to his place.
Jim Blaisdell from the employer side went into the WMC before I did. He became the Northern California director and I was made the assistant. Then Jim was asked to go to Hawaii to organize the Hawaiian Employers’ Council. I moved into his position as director, but I didn’t get paid as director because charges were made accusing me of being a Communist. There were people who opposed me because I had represented Harry Bridges. It took a couple of years before I got cleared by the Civil Service people. So I worked on the WMC for two years and got assistant director’s pay while doing the director’s job.
After the war I thought about going to law school. I had wanted to go in 1929, when I graduated from U.C. Berkeley. But then the Depression came along. I knew a number of students at Boalt Hall, the Cal law school, and they told me that to completely and a lot of people I knew in the labor movement were now dead or retired. It was a different show with lots of lawyers who had entered the field in the WLB period.
I had a little money coming from the government and decided to take a chance on law school. At the same time the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) and the San Francisco clothing industry employers offered me the job of being Mr. Impartial Chairman, which is what they called their arbitrator. I made an arrangement with them for a retainer. I figured that, plus the money I had coming, would carry me through law school for a year. Interestingly, when I went off to law school, Harry said to me, “Well, we’ll be working together again.”
What I didn’t anticipate was that as soon as it was announced that I was going to law school and I was an arbitrator, I found myself with all kinds of arbitration cases. To manage work and school I arranged with the dean to take less than the standard number of units each semester by going to both summer session and intersession. I had maybe one week off every year for the three years I was in law school. I would hear arbitration cases and then start studying. At 11, 12, one o’clock in the morning I would still be at it. I also taught a course in collective bargaining at U.C. Extension and raised a family in those years.
About the time I finished law school the 1948 longshore strike was ending. The longshoremen had gotten the union-controlled hiring hall the hard way in 1934. The employers tried to get rid of it in ’48. It took a strike to say, “You can’t do that.” When the strike was settled, the employers installed a new bargaining agency. That group, the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), and the ILWU established a new grievance procedure and decided that they were going to pick the arbitrators. Before this the arbitrators were always selected by the Secretary of Labor.
By this point I was kosher with the waterfront employers. They knew about my activities with the WMC, when I used to appear publicly before big war shows in San Francisco to promote our slogan, “Stay on the job and finish the job.” This experience sort of dried the red out of me for them. They now thought I’d been cleansed.
So both parties, the ILWU and the PMA, asked me if I would be their Coast Arbitrator. He would be the guy to whom regional or area arbitration decisions could be appealed. I said I wanted to meet and discuss the terms. We came together in a conference room. Across from me sat Harry, Lou Goldblatt and Howard Bodine of the ILWU plus all of the employers. For the first time in their history Harry and his group and the ship owners were on the same side of the table. I was sitting over here by myself. We started negotiating and I asked whether it would be agreeable that I could continue to arbitrate other than just longshore cases. That was worked out. We talked money and agreed on a retainer, which I needed since I had just gotten out of law school and didn’t have any money. When all that was done, I said, “I want a caucus.” Harry was puzzled. He asked, “Who the hell are you going to caucus with?” I said, “With myself. I got to make up my mind whether I really want to do this.” Then I went out in the hall just like you would when you have a caucus. I took about ten minutes going over everything in my mind, went back in, and said, “We got a deal.”
Under the new ILWU-PMA setup we established a process called “instant arbitration” with Area Arbitrators available 24 hours, seven days a week. Later we got Relief Arbitrators for the weekend. I can’t say that somebody sat down and came up with the idea of instant arbitration. It occurred to me, but I’m sure it occurred to everybody else because it was so obvious. As soon as we had Area Arbitrators in place it became plain sensible.
When I met with the ILWU guys and the employers in ’48 and they told me they were going to set up a grievance procedure, I said, “Look, you picked me as Coast Arbitrator because I had a background representing unions and presumably I know something about the longshore industry. So why don’t we do the same thing with the Area Arbitrators? You’re going to have four of them. Pick two from the union and two from the employers. You have the right to cancel ’em at any time.” They thought that was a great idea.
We knew the locations for the four Area Arbitrators—San Pedro, Northern California, Oregon and Washington. Now we’re in our 51st year. At no time was any Area Arbitrator discharged by either side. That’s not to say that there haven’t been complaints. But Harry had a firm position on that when he was ILWU president. Locals would complain about an Area Arbitrator, and Harry would say, “That’s it. We’re not going to start changing arbitrators. Let ’em die or let ‘em retire.” And that’s what’s been done. That’s the history of it.
So we weren’t going to have revolving Area Arbitrators. They were going to be permanent, just as the Coast Arbitrator was. Before that they did have revolving arbitrators. Up to 1948 they had over 200 arbitration awards from different arbitrators at different ports. One of the things done in the ’48 strike aftermath was to wipe them all out. Then we started out anew.
I mentioned the concept of instant arbitration. In practice it functions like this. If any work stoppage occurs, the Area Arbitrator goes right down there. The longshoremen are not supposed to strike, but they can stop work if they allege safety. The arbitrators go down there to check it out. We’re talking about people selected from within the industry, too. We’re not talking about a professor who wrote a book. So they know something about the longshore industry.
The Area Arbitrator can order a correction of an unsafe condition, or say to the longshoremen, “That’s not a safety beef.” If the Area Arbitrator finds that it is a real safety beef, he tells the employer to correct it. The longshoremen can work somewhere else on the ship and they get paid for their time standing by. If, on the other hand, cause work stoppages.
As I recall, the first safety beef involved a load of lumber which was on a very narrow pier. Somehow it had disintegrated. The longshoremen claimed this was an unsafe condition. They turned out to be right, too. The answer was to go down there and look at it, not sit around and wait until there was a hearing up at PMA headquarters with the ship standing by.
The idea was to get the ships out because there were crew, interest and other expenses to pay for and if the longshoremen were not working they were not getting paid. So instant arbitration was just a matter of common sense. Now, after a dispute has been settled on the dock, if you still want a formal hearing you can have it. As noted, the resulting decision by the Area Arbitrator can then be appealed to the Coast Arbitrator.
Over the years I have done mediation as well as arbitration. The mediator and arbitrator roles are completely different. When I’m an arbitrator, I presumably am “judge,” so you operate and they operate from that point of view. As a mediator, you are seeking an accommodation, but you can’t dictate one. Mediation is not very spectacular. It’s just hard work.
About 1961 I acted as the mediator between the ILWU and the ship owners in Hawaii. The union had given 48 hour strike notice. When I got to the Islands there were lots of workers and employers present when we met at the old Hawaiian Village hotel. I said, “I’m not going to mediate with a mass meeting. You’re going to have to give me a small committee,” which they did.
See, if you start mediating with a mass meeting, everybody’s going to disagree. If you get a small group, at least you can try to work something out with them and then tell ’em, “Go sell it.” If they can’t, they’ll come back and tell you why and then you’ll try again. That’s the kind of mediation I use. It’s the only form that makes any sense. Through mediation we did arrange an agreement covering the main issues in Hawaii, by the way. So there was no strike.
I also mediated the end of the 1971 West Coast longshore strike. The strike had been going on for over 100 days. As a result of President Richard Nixon’s directions, Congress was entertaining the idea of a statute providing for compulsory arbitration. Of course, Harry didn’t want that, since it would take away the union’s main weapon, the strike. So there’s no doubt that this was part of the pressure on Harry to meet with the employers. That’s when I was called in, and even though I was the Coast Arbitrator, they called me in as mediator. We met for seven days and eight nights and came to an agreement. That ended the ’71 strike. What was interesting to me is that there were five, six or eight issues involving what we call “steady men,” or workers who are employed directly by Stevedore companies rather than through the union controlled hiring hall. These matters were not settled at the time. I said to Harry, “How the hell are we going to settle the strike with these issues unresolved?” He replied, “Oh, you and Rudy Rubio, one of our officers, will meet afterwards and work ’em out.” And that’s what happened. Looking back at my nearly 70 years of experience, I’d say that in the collective bargaining field there is a “climate” at any one time. That was true in 1971. There’s a climate for settlement, a climate of excitement and a climate that’s going to lead to a strike or a dispute. It depends on whether the employers and the union have a beef or whether they want to have a beef. The climate of collective bargaining changed almost immediately, for example, when the Taft-Hartley Act was passed in 1947.
Taft-Hartley came in at the beginning of the McCarthy era. It made union officers sign an anti-communist affidavit to use the federal labor board. The waterfront employers went farther. They said, “We’re going to make you sign an anti-communist statement or we won’t do business with you.” They also insisted, “We’re going to get rid of the union-controlled hiring hall because the act says you can’t have one anymore.”
Taft-Hartley outlawed the closed shop, which required that all employees be union members. So this was the new climate. The result was the 1948 longshore strike, which the union won. But, the point is, in any collective bargaining situation one has to discern what the current climate is. Is it calm, is it collected, is it stormy, is it threatening?
There is always a set of questions. Will the employers accept arbitration? Will they offer mediation? Will the employers accept mediation? Will the union strike? Will the employers fold because they don’t want a strike? That’s what I mean when I talk about climate. This is human relations and I think that’s really what is the exciting part about collective bargaining. It’s been that way for me all my lifetime.
As to Bridges and the ILWU, I’d say that Harry had an integrity that was recognized by the workers. He was interested in having a democratically run union and he never lost touch with the rank-and-file. If you have integrity, are honest and straightforward, take firm positions—even when you’re wrong but are representing the interests of the people you’re supposed to represent in a democratic fashion with no discrimination—what else do you want? In my book, Harry had all those characteristics.
The union itself truly works in a democratic manner and is responsive to its membership. You don’t have any dictators. Everything is submitted to a vote. The drafting of proposals is done by a caucus of elected officials. Negotiations are carried on by an elected negotiating committee. During the life of the longshore contract you have an elected Coast Committee which represents the workers in enforcing the agreement.
These characteristics, while not rare, are not common in most unions. They are certainly completely rare insofar as employer groups or corporations are concerned. And while the ILWU gets the best conditions it can, and has one of the best longshore contracts in the world, it nevertheless has been willing to take positions on social issues. The union took positions condemning discrimination. It was not always successful with all of its own people, but it still did this. That’s why I think the ILWU is a different union and an outstanding operation.